After right-to-work passage, Michigan Education Association retains 99% of members

The president of the Michigan Education Association, Steve Cook, says the state’s new right-to-work law has not put a big dent in the teacher union’s membership.

According to Cook, who appeared on Michigan Public Television’s “Off the Record,” only 1% opted to stop paying dues during the dropout period. But while Cook says that shows most school employees still support the union, he argues the law made retaining members more expensive.

“Between the efforts of right-to-work and the efforts to collect dues, it’s been very expensive for the association,” Cook said. “It’s taken our focus off other things we would have rather been doing.”

The MEA, along with the American Federation of Teachers, are also defending extended contracts negotiated by some union locals that could delay the effects of right to work for years into the future.

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In recent days there has been much made of a proposed overhaul to Michigan’s education system.

The overhaul consists of three parts:

two bills currently working their way through the state House and Senate,

and one draft of a bill that has yet to be introduced.

The bills are part of a package devised in part by Governor Rick Snyder’s education advisor Richard McLellan in an attempt to achieve the Governor’s goal of providing an “Any Time, Any Place, Any Way, Any Pace” learning model.

The lawmakers who passed legislation this week making Michigan a right to work state wanted to make sure the voters couldn’t try to repeal it by collecting signatures and putting another referendum on the ballot. That‘s how unhappy citizens got rid of the governor’s first emergency manager law last month.

So the legislature included some money in the bill. Under Michigan’s constitution, appropriations bills are immune from the referendum process. The idea was to make sure right to work could never be repealed unless by a vote of the legislature.

And since Democrats winning control of the State Senate any time in the next decade is seen as virtually impossible, those who want right to work figure they have made sure it is here to stay.

Yet believe it or not, there is a way those opposing right to work could collect signatures and get something on the ballot to repeal this. It won’t be easy, and it would take at least two years.